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Board Design

8 replies [Last post]
Mon, 02/21/2005 - 18:50
Anonymous

I'm working on an idea for a property development game, where players buy property and land, and renovate and build property to make a profit.
It will be different to Monopoly, as I hate that particualr game! Although I love Triopoly...

Anyway, I need to design a board for this, and I want to have different safe and risky areas, each with different average market values. I know how I'm going to handle market values etc, but I can;t work out how to design the board to have several different areas, allowing for players to develop/build property in each area. Other factors have to be displayed that affect value, for example schools and travel links, council estates etc! I'm thinking maybe a simple square map of a made-up county/state, with shaded areas , so red is lowest value and green highest for example. Therefore, around a railway station there would be a green circle, and round a sewage farm there would be red, with obviously different shades in between.

EDIT: Permanent colours won't work, as some areas will go up and down in vlaue independently, for example if a new railway link is built. I'm now htinking a small square in each area, with space to place a coloured card indicating that area's value...

Any thoughts/ideas???

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Tue, 02/22/2005 - 14:06
#1
Jebbou
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Joined: 07/29/2008
Board Design

How about pilling up counters of different colors (like poker or "axis and allies" counters), in a single square. Lets say you place police station, with a 5x5 radius, you then add "blue" counters on all squares of that area. The value of a square (land) could be the number of counters in a single square.

Jeb

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Tue, 02/22/2005 - 14:42
#2
Anonymous
Board Design

I think Jebbou's got the right idea here... Beneficial things could add a blue chip, while detrimental things could add a red chip... That would be an easily alterable way of keeping track of values... There might be a few things wrong with an area, but if the benefits far outweigh it (a pile of 5 blue chips vs a single red, for example), it'd still be a great place to invest...

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Tue, 02/22/2005 - 17:06
#3
Anonymous
Board Design

I like that idea, but I'm worried about a game board crowded with coloured tokens everywhere.
Maybe a separate bar at the side with a square for each area?

I also like the idea where you mentioned the radius of the police station - some things would have a bigger radius of effect than others.

Bear in mind if I decide to represent player's properties on the board with monopoly-style houses or something rather than cards then the board will have a lot of stuff on it...

I think I need to design the basic board shape/size/image before doing this part...

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Fri, 02/25/2005 - 03:06
#4
Anonymous
Regions?

You could always regionalize the board and each region, district, burrough, whatever could have an an off-board mat that tracks the various improvements that apply to the individual properties. This would give players with properties in a given region an ability to work together, or not, at a higher level.

Just a thought.

Tim

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Fri, 02/25/2005 - 03:53
#5
GROGnads
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Joined: 12/31/1969
Just a suggestion

Hello and here's just something to consider, but what about if you were to USE real actual 'overhead' photos of CITIES or TOWNS as the 'map areas' for the gameboards, and then partition those into smaller areas? This way you could MAKE these as individually 'personalized' locales and would result in many, many places being depicted to appeal to everyone where they happen to live? Good Luck

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Fri, 02/25/2005 - 09:11
#6
VeritasGames
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Joined: 08/01/2008
Board Design

A) there are freeware and shareware fonts for mapmaking; and

B) Profantasy Software makes Campaign Cartographer and that includes both 3D map making tools and some modern houses and map tools; and

C) Clipart.com probably has lots of suitable stuff

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Fri, 02/25/2005 - 12:22
#7
Anonymous
Board Design

I found a good aerial photo to work with with some help on this forum, and then overlayed several large square areas, which were then divided up into gids - Each square can then hold a property token. Also, one of these squares is for placing token(s) to mark regional value variation for that area.

I need to playtest it, but it looks good so far.

topdecker, I like the idea of a separate mat/board area that is used to track the state of each 'area' as I am calling them, but I find that I dislike the idea of having loads of counters etc all over the place. Silly really, when I think of games I play that use exactly that system to very good effect.

Anyway, thanks people for your help, 1st playtest soon and then I will know how well everything comes together.... :?

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Fri, 02/25/2005 - 20:21
#8
Anonymous
here's a thought.

If building a building causes "area affect" changes, make the rectangles/sqaures the appropriate size and overlay them. Make them colored, but transparent.

This way, the combination of base color, plus all color sheets overlaid give you a clear answer on its value (if you can figure out color mixing, which I have no clue about).

Drawback would be if you had too many colors, and it all looks brown in the end...

Just a thought tha might work if you are using say 6 colors and then have a color reference sheet w/all the combos on it.

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